Jeep Repair: 1983 J10 sarting problems, slow speed, jeeps

Question
I recently purchased 1983  J10 with 360 motor.Truck will not start. put new battery in it and while cranking the pos and neg cables heat up? truck is getting fuel through pump. also in the box of parts, that came with there was a melted pos batt. cable. The person I got it from changed both cables and seloiniod. Also with new batt motor turns over at a slow speed, marked timing where it was and also tryed moving distributor to see if timing was off.  

Answer
You've got to make sure the engine and chassis is properly grounded.  Additionally, if the gauge of wire being used is too small or there's too much resistance then the wires will get hot.

This is probably going to be out of my league as I didn't start working on any jeeps for more than a decade after your J10 was built.  But if you've got access to a multimeter, experience with it and time to mess with it then I'll see if I can be of assistance.  I don't know how much info I can pull up on it but let me know how you want to proceed.
Doug